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I beg you for my child, whom I have fathered in my bonds, Onesimus,
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who once was useless to you, but now is useful to you and to me;
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I am sending him back. You therefore receive him, that is, my own heart,
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whom I wanted to keep with me, that in your behalf he might minister to me in the bonds of the gospel.
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But I was willing to do nothing without your consent, that your goodness would not be as of necessity, but of free will.
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For perhaps he was therefore separated from you for a while, that you would have him forever,
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no longer as a slave, but more than a slave, a beloved brother, specially to me, but how much rather to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord.